I appreciated the clarification of the term citta - it confirmed a suspicion I have had about the Buddha's teachings but am not familiar enough with the Pali cannon to clarify for myself.
I found the critique of 'emotion' as a category of experience particularly helpful, and in a way liberating. I would perhaps summarise it as something like: we have somatic and cognitive 'experiences', sometimes those two co-condition each other to prodce an iterative process we call emotion.
However, that definition does seem a bit reductive to me - that might be partly romantic attachment to the concept of emotions. At the same time, I also think that there is interesting work being done in expanding our definition of the senses (what and how many there are), and there is something in the somatic aspect of emotion which does not fit neatly into our usual 5/6 sense model.
Thanks. I would begin with experience and say that it has two components psychic and somatic. It probably always has these two, but primal emotions such as fear and anger are mostly somatic, and involve the lower part of the triune brain - the so-called reptile brain. On the other hand abstract concepts are mostly psychic.
Thomas Metzinger gives the example of a man with brain damage that left is intellect intact. He has an IQ well above average but is not aware of his own emotional states. He finds it almost impossible to make decisions because he cannot decide which facts are important.
Anyway there is a big difference between a reductive explanation - a simplification for the purpose of understanding - and a reductive definition which reduces the phenomenon itself. Buddhism makes constant use of reductive explanations in the first sense. I think there is a reductive boogie-man created by Romantics which hinders intellectual progress. Indeed it's very difficult to have a conversation about any concept without invoking simpler concepts to explain more complex ones.
But from raw experience we can go in at least two directions. On the one hand we can try to interpret experience in terms of simpler phenomena. This is the scientific (broadly materialistic) method. Scientists, on the whole, want things to be simple. (I'm a scientist) On the other hand we can interpret in terms of more complex phenomena. This is the basic Romantic strategy - Romantics want the world to be magical because they think meaning is magical.
I think Buddhism is aiming at a middle path. Also Buddhism seems to say that its OK to just say "I don't know". If more Romantics were able to live with "I don't know" and not go off into flights of fancy the world would be a better place.
Could you give an example of "work being done" which suggests that emotion is outside the model of 5+1 senses? Are you thinking that for instance proprioception or our awareness of the viscera are senses not included in that model, or are you thinking of something else?
David McMahon's pointing out the enormous, problematic influence of European Romanticism on Western Buddhism is really important. (Thanissaro Bikkhu also wrote about this in Tricycle a few years ago.) Almost no one has taken up this theme, but I hope it will catch on in the Buddhist blogosphere.
I thought your last point, about not rejecting Romanticism out of hand, was valuable. Most of the Romantic trend seems wrong to me, but some parts are right. Beginning by acknowledging what is right may make some audiences more willing to listen to the critique of what is wrong.
They were the first in to point out the social construction of the self, for instance. That's consonant with Buddhist themes, but (as far as I know) not actually found anywhere in Buddhist philosophy/psychology. There's room for an interesting synthesis.
Also I think they were right (contra the Enlightenment) that there are limits to knowledge and reasoning. Those limits may be contingent and practical, rather than necessary and in-principle, but for the forseeable future we can't figure everything out, and have to find ways to live with our own ignorance, uncertainty, and misunderstandings.
The Romantic idealization of intuition and emotion, as a response to that problem, was the wrong move. But it's good to acknowledge that there is a problem, and "Science" isn't going solve it in our lifetimes. So the burden is on non-Romantics to suggest a third alternative.
I would love to hear more about how '[Romanticism] is such a powerful influence on how we see ourselves and the world'
And what 'its unchallenged assumptions' which 'impede our progress in the Dharma' are.
I don't know much about Romanticism except as a reaction to the Enlightenment and its praise for flowery, pretty, poetic stuff that doesn't really work for me. So what are it's unchallenged assumptions?
Perhaps I missed out on a lot of Romanticism because I was raised in the wild West of the US. I think my first conscious exposure to it was through the then FWBO with some poetry by Blake. Since then I can't say I've been (consciously) exposed to very much Romanticism in my Buddhist circles.
And as an aside: David, come on! The great Enlightenment super-dude, Kant, specifically set out to "deny knowledge" (the idea that we can know and prove virtually everything, including God's existence) contra previous Rationalists, "in order to make room for faith” (CPR Bxxx) contra the Empiricists.
I'm quite new to this idea about Romanticism. I'm not really the right person to take up the argument against Romanticism - but so few people even seem to grasp that Romanticism is just another -ism. I'm hoping that someone with more competence in the subject will take it up. However as far as the Triratna Order is concerned it might have to wait until Sangharakshita is pushing up daises. He has at least repudiated his use of terms drawn from German Idealism, but he and Subhuti seem to still be hard-core Romantics.
David McMahan's book The Making of Buddhist Modernism is the best place to get into the subject.
David Chapman's blog Bad Ideas from Dead Germans deals with the related German Idealist movement. Look for other essays by him which touch on the subject. Plus some other writing on Romanticism
If you are a Westerner learning about Buddhism in English then you have almost certainly absorbed some Romantic ideas and probably ideals as well.
I have no deep thoughts on the subject, just wanted to say that the fact that there is no equivalent to emotions in Buddhist thought is a real challenge when trying to lead an introductory class (and continues to be a challenge for lots of us long after). It's a good challenge, in that it makes us look at the constructed and arbitrary nature of a whole category of experience that we take to be fundamental to being human.
But it also makes it very hard to talk to people about how Buddhism might work in their everyday lives. People generally think about their experiences in terms of emotions. I can say something like, yeah, uh, well you experienced unpleasant vedena and then you had a reaction to that vedena and then you told a story about it, and that's sort of like an emotion. That's possibly useful in investigating what we call emotions, but it doesn't help people connect to Buddhism. Find emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding, and all that. I feel like what I'm offering is too far from how they understand their experience to be helpful, especially at the beginning.
Thanks for commenting. There is a big difference between having no collective word for "emotions" and having no emotions. There are certainly emotions throughout the Pāli texts and people react emotionally to situations in ways that are entirely consistent with emotions as we presently understand them.
What is missing is emotions as a separate category. Emotions are not a distinct kind of response.
I think in daily life we can notice that emotions involve a pretty small set of bodily sensations caused by a limited number of hormones (adrenaline, cortisol) combined with the actions of the autonomic nervous system. What gives emotions their eyebrows is the accompanying thoughts - so when having emotions we notice the thoughts and feelings. Importantly if we think differently we can change how we feel. This is also the central insight of cognitive-behavioural therapy!
That said it may be that we decide that "emotion" is a useful category. We still struggle to define emotions accurately. In a sense the only thing that links all emotions is physiological arousal. However we can also group them into those handled by the reptilian brain, and those handled by the old mammalian brain (sometimes called the limbic system). The former are more like reflexes and more difficult to over-ride with the slower neo-cortex. The latter we share with all mammals (and probably birds as well).
The main thing will be to move emotions out from under the Romantic influence - to use other narratives. Personally I think neuroscience gives the better description but I'm still (ironically, yes?) sentimental about traditional Buddhism and I'd like to preserve as much of it as possible.
Wikipedia offers a wee overview on senses here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senses, suggesting up to 16 - depending on how you count.
I recently heard someone speaking of some scientists making a distinction that sounded very much like the Buddhist one between sensing and sense perception - I think it was on an episode of Radio 4's Life Scientific (or failing that it must have been a a TED talk). Sorry to be so vague.
Either way, from the point of view of practice, I guess it doesn't matter how many senses we have - in the propriocepted only the propriocepted, etc.
To be honest, most of the time I'm helping people to notice that they have any sensation between the genitals and the mouth other than indigestion. This is definitely a path of regular steps thing, with quite a risk 'spiritual bypass' for those overly identified with their cognitive aspects.
I genuinely laughed out loud reading that. Thanks. I have a great deal of indigestion myself :-) I find Tai Chi marvellous for connecting with my body - I even wrote about about it: http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2011/06/reeducating-body.html
I sent Sangharakshita my long essay on the Kaccānagotta Sutta. Nityabandhu read it to him, but only hearing something so complex read out, meant he could not really get into the detail. This stuff on the emotions is new in the last couple of weeks, and a bit underdeveloped. My next two major articles will be on the variant Spiral Path texts and the Early Buddhist encounter with Brahmins.
I can't imagine a discussion on the cons of Romanticism or the science of anything, let alone the neuroscience of emotion with either Sangharkashita or Subhūti.
I have a strong desire to try to bring together many of the science threads from here and try to create a genuine synthesis of Buddhism and science, but that will take some time to gestate. I think it's fair to say that Buddhism and science have been in dialogue and have been writing about each other without committing to a more intimate relationship. I'd like to see a symbiosis. I have several more Raves planned which will touch on related subjects. Perhaps by next year the way forward will be clear.
I think it's still appropriate to translate citta as heart in certain contexts. Heart can mean not only center of emotions but center of will and intention. This is seen in English phrases like "My heart's not in it" and "My heart's desire". That this sense overlaps with citta is suggested to me by the third foundation of mindfulness, citta, which is illustrated in the sutta by what sound to me like moods, not thoughts.
Sure. I think there will be some contexts as you say. Some people would have 'heart' as the standard translation. I'm surrounded by Romanticists, so I'm arguing more strongly than I might otherwise.
I have been thinking lately about the necessity for doubt if we are to make intellectual progress. I follow my doubts, and learn a great deal.
Best Wishes Jayarava
Thursday, November 10, 2011
[Image]IN A LENGTHY WRITTEN exchange with a colleague on the subject of citta it became clear that there is something unusual about the way early Buddhism treats emotion. To begin with there is no word in Pāli or Sanskrit for "emotions" as a separate category of experience. On the other hand there are words for distinct emotions such as fear (bhaya), anger (koda, rosa), hatred (dosa), joy (ānanda, pamojja), sadness (domanassa, soka) and so on. So emotions are concepts in themselves, but do not form a natural category different from other kinds of experiences. However the received tradition is that ancient Indians treat emotions under the heading of 'mind'. Alongside this we frequently find the suggestion that citta ought to be translated as 'heart'. I want to look again at this.
When I wrote about citta back in March 2011 (Mind Words) I bent my definition to include emotions. I am not so sure now. To recapitulate: citta comes from the root √cit which I defined thus: "√cit concerns what catches and holds our attention on the one hand, and what we move towards [or away from] on the other." My colleague had consulted Margaret Cone, the Pāli Lexicographer and author of the new Dictionary of Pali, about her dictionary definition and she replied that citta means 'thinking, thought, intention'; with no mention of emotion. This raised the concern that emotions were being "left out", which is quite an interesting proposition. Are emotions being left out here?
On reflection I decided that emotions are not being left out, but they are being defined differently from how we define emotions. From the early Buddhist point of view experience has a bodily component (kāyika) and a mental component (cetasika). This much is clear from the Salla Sutta (SN 36.6, PTS S iv.207), which makes a distinction between bodily pain, and mental suffering: the arahant has the former, but not the latter. [1] Now, we know that emotions too have a felt bodily component, and hence we often use 'feeling/feelings' to talk about or describe emotions: "I feel happy", "how are you feeling" etc. And we know that emotions have a mental component and that this mental component is what distinguishes emotions from other types of bodily sensation (i.e. proprioception, the normal operation of the viscera, or physical touch).
Likewise from the point of view of physiology emotions are indistinguishable from each other. Cordelia Fine summarises some the research on this in her entertaining little book A Mind of Its Own[Image]. She points out, for instance, that the mechanism that makes our heart race with fear, exhilaration or plain physical exertion is the same in each case. The body has very limited responses to stimulation. Fine sums it up with this equation:
emotion = arousal + emotional thoughts.
Arousal, it turns out, comes in one flavour but differing intensities. Arousal simply prepares the body for activity. If you are shaking fear, or anger, or trembling with anticipation of reward it's all just arousal. And what makes the experience distinct is the accompanying thoughts.[2]
Now this view of emotion is quite consistent with the early Buddhist model which seems to see emotions as agitation accompanied by thoughts. The Pāli word for empathy is anukampa: literally 'to tremble along with' i.e. to feel what someone else feels. In the Mahāmaṅgala Sutta we find that one aspect of the highest blessing is:
Phuṭṭhassa lokadhammehi, cittaṃ yassa na kampati;
Touched by objects of experience, his mind is not agitated. (Sn 47)Considering lokadhamma recall that loka is our experiential world, and a dhamma is the object of manas, hence my translation as 'objects of experience'. So what usually happens when we have an experience is agitation (kampati) of our mind (citta). Interestingly when the word emotion first entered the English language from French in the 16th century it meant 'agitation'. So what has changed?
I think what changed was first the 18th century European Enlightenment, followed by the Romantic reaction against it, which itself found expression in the Psychoanalytic movement. I think this partly because I've read David McMahan's book The Making of Buddhist Modernism[Image] and agree that these are some of the main influences on the modern world generally, and have deeply influenced the presentation of Buddhism around the world since the 19th century. McMahan includes Protestantism as well, but we can leave that aside for now.
Partly due to Enlightenment propaganda we see the period before the emergence of science as one of rampant irrationality and superstition. (Though this was countered in the popular imagination by the Romantic idea of the "noble savage", and in fact superstition and irrationality are still rampant!) Enlightenment thinkers began to apply objectivity and reason to many problems, and discovered they could solve many of them. Whatever else we say about Newton, Locke, Hook & co. we must acknowledge their great achievements. So great was their success that they and their successors began to see reason as superior to emotion. To them the universe seemed like a giant clockwork machine that they could take apart and fully understand. To be fair this notion was not new to them, but was originally a product of theological thinking about 'the music of the spheres' and the 'great chain of being' which had been around for centuries. Enlightenment thinkers were consciously disenchanting the world, and felt more free as they did so: free from the irrational leadership of the Church which feared reason and knowledge, and free from the small fears which ruled every day life. Soon they began to be free of the fear of diseases like Smallpox as well. And free from some of the uncertainty of life. We enjoy these freedoms largely without acknowledgement these days, and with apparent resentment amongst many Buddhists (who seem to hate scientists, perhaps because they have been so successful?).
However the disenchantment cultivated by Enlightenment figures left some people feeling that such a mechanical universe was lacking something. In England especially poets began to celebrate the mystery of the cosmos, and especially to revel in the unreasoning and irrationality of flights of emotion. They sought to topple reason from the pinnacle of human endeavour and replace it with emotion. The Romantics indulged in all kinds of emotions, and produced art, literature and music designed to stimulate strong emotions - everything from love to horror. And they took all kinds of mind altering substances for the intense experiences they produced. They did not let society tell them how to live - the heroic individual and their emotional life ruled. For Romantics the exotic and mysterious provoked the kinds of emotions they enjoyed, so they cultivated an interest in them - the intellectual was seen as dull and lifeless. They also worshipped nature and valued the natural world, or at least an idealised notion of it. In many ways the morality 1960s was simply a late flowering of a seed planted by the 18th and 19th century Romantics (and just as misguided). This focus on emotion seems to underlie the idea that emotions are a particular category of human experience, and one of very high value.
In some ways we can see the Psycho-analytical movement as an attempt to reconcile these two rather monstrous cultural forces. Freud certainly saw himself as a scientist, and his subject of study was the emotional life of the patient. History has shown that Freud, while a gifted observer and writer, was no scientist. Only recently are neuroscientists starting to put psychology on a proper scientific footing. But Freud and his successors have profoundly influenced the way we view emotions. Emotions are hypostasized and become a special category of experience, distinct from thoughts and simple body sensations. Thoughts convey reason, while emotions are an expression of our mysterious 'soul' or 'spirit', a Romantic expression of our true nature. If we are to understand ourselves, the Psychologists tell us, then we must understand our inner emotional life; we must delve into the sources of our emotional reactions. It is because of the Romantics and Freud that we believe that an unexpressed emotion represents a danger to our well-being. As William Blake said:
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.This is very far from either the early Buddhist view, or the emerging consensus from neuroscience. Buddhists texts are constantly telling us to use reason to keep our emotions in check. We are to avoid stimulating agitation by withdrawing our attention from sensory stimulation. This aspect of Buddhism is notably unpopular in Romantic Western Buddhism. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that saṃsāra is all bad. We just want to enjoy ourselves a little: by which we seem to mean to stimulate the emotions: be it joy, or horror. Unfortunately for us Western Buddhism is mainly lead by people from the Baby Boomer generation, and from that part of it which saw the Hippy movement, with its Romantic hedonism, self-absorption, self-indulgence, and intoxication, as a good thing. Renunciation is anathema to the Romantic.
In conclusion early Buddhism had a very different view of emotions than the view current in the Western World. Emotions were not a distinct category of experience, though I would argue that most of what we call emotion these days does fit into the broad category of papañca (though even the definition leans towards the mental rather than physical). Therefore the Buddha has no position on emotion, and emotions as a category play no part in his methods. Yes, we cultivate metta, but note that in the locus classicus, the Karaṇīyametta Sutta it is the mind (mānaso) that includes all beings, not the heart. Yes, we cultivate pamojja; and yes we suppress anger. But there is no theory of emotions as a distinct type of experience. At best emotions simply agitate us, and can be divided into those that fool us into craving, and those that fool us into aversion.
We Buddhists have long had critiques of materialism. We understand to some extent the influence of Scientific Rationalism. We also have some understanding of the influence of Protestantism. But we seem to have almost no notion that we are influenced by the Romantic movement, or by the German philosophical counterpart Idealism. Most Buddhists get interested in Psychology to some extent since it seems to related to what we do, but we have no sense that it channels Romanticism. There is no traditional critique of Romanticism perhaps because it wasn't a traditional view, whereas some form of materialism always was. Western Buddhists (and I may say the Triratna Order in particular) desperately need to develop a critique of Romanticism because it is such a powerful influence on how we see ourselves and the world, and its unchallenged assumptions impede our progress in the Dharma. This is not to say that we should reject Romanticism out of hand, only that we should be aware of the history of these ideas and how they influence our worldview.
~~oOo~~
Notes
The kāyika/cetasika distinction occurs in other places as well, e.g. M i.302, iii.288-90; S iv.209, iv.231; v.111; A i.81, i.137, ii.143.
That these different kinds of thoughts are handled by different brain structures using different neurotransmitters doesn't change the facts of the physical manifestation in the rest of the body produced by the sympathetic nervous system and a narrow range of hormones.
Further Reading: 'The Psychology of Emotions in Buddhist Perspective' Sir D. B. Jayatilleke Commemoration Lecture, Colombo, 1976 by Dr. Padmasiri de Silva. Access to Insight, 21 February 2011.
Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being. Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard, and B. Alan Wallace. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 4 (2) 2005, p.59-63.
James, William (1884) 'What is an Emotion?' Mind, 9, 188-205. Online: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/emotion.htm.
Le Doux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain. Orion, 1999.
BBC Radio 4 did a whole series of science programs in the emotions [needs Real Player].
14 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formAnother good one - thank you
Friday, November 04, 2011
Hi Jñānagarbha
Could you say why you thought it was good?
Jayarava
Friday, November 04, 2011
I appreciated the clarification of the term citta - it confirmed a suspicion I have had about the Buddha's teachings but am not familiar enough with the Pali cannon to clarify for myself.
I found the critique of 'emotion' as a category of experience particularly helpful, and in a way liberating. I would perhaps summarise it as something like: we have somatic and cognitive 'experiences', sometimes those two co-condition each other to prodce an iterative process we call emotion.
However, that definition does seem a bit reductive to me - that might be partly romantic attachment to the concept of emotions. At the same time, I also think that there is interesting work being done in expanding our definition of the senses (what and how many there are), and there is something in the somatic aspect of emotion which does not fit neatly into our usual 5/6 sense model.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Hi Jñānagarbha
Thanks. I would begin with experience and say that it has two components psychic and somatic. It probably always has these two, but primal emotions such as fear and anger are mostly somatic, and involve the lower part of the triune brain - the so-called reptile brain. On the other hand abstract concepts are mostly psychic.
Thomas Metzinger gives the example of a man with brain damage that left is intellect intact. He has an IQ well above average but is not aware of his own emotional states. He finds it almost impossible to make decisions because he cannot decide which facts are important.
Anyway there is a big difference between a reductive explanation - a simplification for the purpose of understanding - and a reductive definition which reduces the phenomenon itself. Buddhism makes constant use of reductive explanations in the first sense. I think there is a reductive boogie-man created by Romantics which hinders intellectual progress. Indeed it's very difficult to have a conversation about any concept without invoking simpler concepts to explain more complex ones.
But from raw experience we can go in at least two directions. On the one hand we can try to interpret experience in terms of simpler phenomena. This is the scientific (broadly materialistic) method. Scientists, on the whole, want things to be simple. (I'm a scientist) On the other hand we can interpret in terms of more complex phenomena. This is the basic Romantic strategy - Romantics want the world to be magical because they think meaning is magical.
I think Buddhism is aiming at a middle path. Also Buddhism seems to say that its OK to just say "I don't know". If more Romantics were able to live with "I don't know" and not go off into flights of fancy the world would be a better place.
Could you give an example of "work being done" which suggests that emotion is outside the model of 5+1 senses? Are you thinking that for instance proprioception or our awareness of the viscera are senses not included in that model, or are you thinking of something else?
Cheers
Jayarava
Friday, November 04, 2011
Thanks for another great piece!
David McMahon's pointing out the enormous, problematic influence of European Romanticism on Western Buddhism is really important. (Thanissaro Bikkhu also wrote about this in Tricycle a few years ago.) Almost no one has taken up this theme, but I hope it will catch on in the Buddhist blogosphere.
I thought your last point, about not rejecting Romanticism out of hand, was valuable. Most of the Romantic trend seems wrong to me, but some parts are right. Beginning by acknowledging what is right may make some audiences more willing to listen to the critique of what is wrong.
They were the first in to point out the social construction of the self, for instance. That's consonant with Buddhist themes, but (as far as I know) not actually found anywhere in Buddhist philosophy/psychology. There's room for an interesting synthesis.
Also I think they were right (contra the Enlightenment) that there are limits to knowledge and reasoning. Those limits may be contingent and practical, rather than necessary and in-principle, but for the forseeable future we can't figure everything out, and have to find ways to live with our own ignorance, uncertainty, and misunderstandings.
The Romantic idealization of intuition and emotion, as a response to that problem, was the wrong move. But it's good to acknowledge that there is a problem, and "Science" isn't going solve it in our lifetimes. So the burden is on non-Romantics to suggest a third alternative.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Great piece, Jayarava.
I would love to hear more about how '[Romanticism] is such a powerful influence on how we see ourselves and the world'
And what 'its unchallenged assumptions' which 'impede our progress in the Dharma' are.
I don't know much about Romanticism except as a reaction to the Enlightenment and its praise for flowery, pretty, poetic stuff that doesn't really work for me. So what are it's unchallenged assumptions?
Perhaps I missed out on a lot of Romanticism because I was raised in the wild West of the US. I think my first conscious exposure to it was through the then FWBO with some poetry by Blake. Since then I can't say I've been (consciously) exposed to very much Romanticism in my Buddhist circles.
And as an aside: David, come on! The great Enlightenment super-dude, Kant, specifically set out to "deny knowledge" (the idea that we can know and prove virtually everything, including God's existence) contra previous Rationalists, "in order to make room for faith” (CPR Bxxx) contra the Empiricists.
Friday, November 04, 2011
I'm quite new to this idea about Romanticism. I'm not really the right person to take up the argument against Romanticism - but so few people even seem to grasp that Romanticism is just another -ism. I'm hoping that someone with more competence in the subject will take it up. However as far as the Triratna Order is concerned it might have to wait until Sangharakshita is pushing up daises. He has at least repudiated his use of terms drawn from German Idealism, but he and Subhuti seem to still be hard-core Romantics.
David McMahan's book The Making of Buddhist Modernism is the best place to get into the subject.
There is also this talk Buddhist Romanticism by Thanissaro.
David Chapman's blog Bad Ideas from Dead Germans deals with the related German Idealist movement. Look for other essays by him which touch on the subject. Plus some other writing on Romanticism
If you are a Westerner learning about Buddhism in English then you have almost certainly absorbed some Romantic ideas and probably ideals as well.
Friday, November 04, 2011
I have no deep thoughts on the subject, just wanted to say that the fact that there is no equivalent to emotions in Buddhist thought is a real challenge when trying to lead an introductory class (and continues to be a challenge for lots of us long after). It's a good challenge, in that it makes us look at the constructed and arbitrary nature of a whole category of experience that we take to be fundamental to being human.
But it also makes it very hard to talk to people about how Buddhism might work in their everyday lives. People generally think about their experiences in terms of emotions. I can say something like, yeah, uh, well you experienced unpleasant vedena and then you had a reaction to that vedena and then you told a story about it, and that's sort of like an emotion. That's possibly useful in investigating what we call emotions, but it doesn't help people connect to Buddhism. Find emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding, and all that. I feel like what I'm offering is too far from how they understand their experience to be helpful, especially at the beginning.
Anyhoo, helpful and astute post, as always.
xoxo, Dhivajri
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Hi Dhīvajrī
Thanks for commenting. There is a big difference between having no collective word for "emotions" and having no emotions. There are certainly emotions throughout the Pāli texts and people react emotionally to situations in ways that are entirely consistent with emotions as we presently understand them.
What is missing is emotions as a separate category. Emotions are not a distinct kind of response.
I think in daily life we can notice that emotions involve a pretty small set of bodily sensations caused by a limited number of hormones (adrenaline, cortisol) combined with the actions of the autonomic nervous system. What gives emotions their eyebrows is the accompanying thoughts - so when having emotions we notice the thoughts and feelings. Importantly if we think differently we can change how we feel. This is also the central insight of cognitive-behavioural therapy!
That said it may be that we decide that "emotion" is a useful category. We still struggle to define emotions accurately. In a sense the only thing that links all emotions is physiological arousal. However we can also group them into those handled by the reptilian brain, and those handled by the old mammalian brain (sometimes called the limbic system). The former are more like reflexes and more difficult to over-ride with the slower neo-cortex. The latter we share with all mammals (and probably birds as well).
The main thing will be to move emotions out from under the Romantic influence - to use other narratives. Personally I think neuroscience gives the better description but I'm still (ironically, yes?) sentimental about traditional Buddhism and I'd like to preserve as much of it as possible.
Cheers
Jayarava
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Wikipedia offers a wee overview on senses here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senses, suggesting up to 16 - depending on how you count.
I recently heard someone speaking of some scientists making a distinction that sounded very much like the Buddhist one between sensing and sense perception - I think it was on an episode of Radio 4's Life Scientific (or failing that it must have been a a TED talk). Sorry to be so vague.
Either way, from the point of view of practice, I guess it doesn't matter how many senses we have - in the propriocepted only the propriocepted, etc.
To be honest, most of the time I'm helping people to notice that they have any sensation between the genitals and the mouth other than indigestion. This is definitely a path of regular steps thing, with quite a risk 'spiritual bypass' for those overly identified with their cognitive aspects.
Monday, November 07, 2011
By the way - have you spoken to Bhante or Subhuti about this stuff? I'm sure Subhuti would be very interested in discussing it.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Hey Jñānagarbha
I genuinely laughed out loud reading that. Thanks. I have a great deal of indigestion myself :-) I find Tai Chi marvellous for connecting with my body - I even wrote about about it: http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2011/06/reeducating-body.html
I sent Sangharakshita my long essay on the Kaccānagotta Sutta. Nityabandhu read it to him, but only hearing something so complex read out, meant he could not really get into the detail. This stuff on the emotions is new in the last couple of weeks, and a bit underdeveloped. My next two major articles will be on the variant Spiral Path texts and the Early Buddhist encounter with Brahmins.
I can't imagine a discussion on the cons of Romanticism or the science of anything, let alone the neuroscience of emotion with either Sangharkashita or Subhūti.
I have a strong desire to try to bring together many of the science threads from here and try to create a genuine synthesis of Buddhism and science, but that will take some time to gestate. I think it's fair to say that Buddhism and science have been in dialogue and have been writing about each other without committing to a more intimate relationship. I'd like to see a symbiosis. I have several more Raves planned which will touch on related subjects. Perhaps by next year the way forward will be clear.
Regards
Jayarava
Monday, November 07, 2011
I think it's still appropriate to translate citta as heart in certain contexts. Heart can mean not only center of emotions but center of will and intention. This is seen in English phrases like "My heart's not in it" and "My heart's desire". That this sense overlaps with citta is suggested to me by the third foundation of mindfulness, citta, which is illustrated in the sutta by what sound to me like moods, not thoughts.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Hi Swanditch
Sure. I think there will be some contexts as you say. Some people would have 'heart' as the standard translation. I'm surrounded by Romanticists, so I'm arguing more strongly than I might otherwise.
I have been thinking lately about the necessity for doubt if we are to make intellectual progress. I follow my doubts, and learn a great deal.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Thursday, November 10, 2011